Defenders of a Wisconsin judge found guilty of felony obstruction for helping a Mexican immigrant evade federal officers raised alarms on Dec. 19 about judicial independence and said they hope the conviction will be overturned on appeal. But the Trump administration hailed the conviction, which is punishable by up to five years in prison, as a sign that no one is above the law. A jury found Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan guilty on Dec. 18 after a four-day trial and six hours of deliberation. The jury found her not guilty of a misdemeanor concealment charge. No sentencing date had been set as of Friday morning. The verdict was a victory for President Donald Trump, whose administration filed the charges and touted Dugan's arrest, posting photos of her being led away in handcuffs. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted Friday that “NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.” “No one can obstruct law enforcement as they carry out their basic duties,” she said in a social media post. “This Department of Justice will not waver as our agents and law enforcement partners continue to make America Safe Again.” The case inflamed tensions over Trump’s immigration crackdown, with his administration branding Dugan an activist judge and Democrats countering that the administration is trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation. U.S. Attorney Brad Schimel, a former Republican Wisconsin attorney general and judge, denied the case was political and urged people to accept the verdict peacefully. “Some have sought to make this about a larger political battle,” Schimel said. “While this case is serious for all involved, it is ultimately about a single day, a single bad day, in a public courthouse. The defendant is certainly not evil. Nor is she a martyr for some greater cause.” Dugan's defense attorney told the jury in closing arguments that the “top levels of government” were involved in bringing charges against Dugan. But prosecutors argued Dugan put her personal beliefs above the law. “You don’t have to agree with immigration enforcement policy to see this was wrong,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka told the jury in closing arguments. “You just have to agree the law applies equally to everyone.” Dugan did not testify. Dugan and her attorneys left the courtroom, ducked into a side conference room and closed the door without speaking to reporters. Steve Biskupic, her lead attorney, later said he was disappointed with the ruling and didn’t understand how the jury could have reached a split verdict since the elements of both charges were virtually the same. Dugan's attorneys were expected to appeal the verdict. A coalition of 13 advocacy groups, including Common Cause Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters Wisconsin, said “higher courts must carefully review the serious constitutional questions this case raises about due process, judicial authority, and federal overreach.” Dugan was suspended as a judge after she was charged and the Wisconsin Constitution bars convicted felons from holding office. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which oversees disciplining of judges in the state, did not respond to a request Friday for information about what happens next in Dugan’s case. On April 18, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case. Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and after they had left led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.

A Wisconsin judge accused of helping a Mexican immigrant evade federal authorities did not take the stand on Dec. 18 after her attorneys presented less than an hour's worth of witnesses in her defense as she faces obstruction and concealment charges. The case against Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was expected to head to the jury later Thursday after closing arguments. The highly unusual charges against a sitting judge are an extraordinary consequence of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Dugan’s supporters say Trump is looking to make an example of her to blunt judicial opposition to immigration arrests. The case is a “shot across the bow” to state judges everywhere meant to intimidate them, said Howard Schweber, a political scientist and affiliate faculty of the University of Wisconsin Law School. “It is unthinkable that this prosecution would have been brought in a prior administration,” Schweber said. “This is truly extraordinary, I would even say unprecedented certainly in my adult lifetime. I have never seen anything like it. And professionally its quite shocking.” Prosecutors have tried to show that Dugan intentionally interfered with members of a federal immigration task force's efforts to arrest 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka told the jury in closing arguments that Dugan provided Flores-Ruiz with an escape route. “A judge does not have absolute authority to do whatever she wants whenever she puts on her robe,” Brown Watzka said. “The defendant is not on trial for her views on immigration policy. She is on trial because she made a series of deliberate decisions to step outside the law in order to help an individual evade federal arrest.” Dugan’s team filed a motion late Wednesday asking U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, who is presiding over the case, to find Dugan not guilty without asking jurors to deliberate. Adelman did not immediately rule Thursday on the motion, which is common after prosecutors present their case. Dugan argued in her motion that she may have inconvenienced the arrest team but she didn’t intentionally try to conceal Flores-Ruiz, noting that although he left through a private door, he still emerged into the public hallway where two officers saw him. Dugan also insisted that long-standing legal precedent prevents civil arrests of people coming or going from courthouses and immigration removal proceedings are civil actions. Her attorneys called only four witnesses Thursday morning, including a public defender who took photographs of the arrest team in the hallway and two judges who testified that the draft policy was in flux in the weeks before Flores-Ruiz’s arrest. The last witness was former Milwaukee mayor and Democratic congressman Tom Barrett, who testified that he’s known Dugan since high school and described her as “extremely honest.” He told jurors under cross-examination that he wasn’t at the courthouse on the day of the arrest and was only testifying about her character. Officers who came to arrest Flores-Ruiz testified that they learned he was in the country illegally after he was arrested in Milwaukee on state battery charges. Flores-Ruiz was scheduled to appear for a hearing in front of Dugan on April 18. Six agents and officers staked out Dugan's courtroom that morning, ready to arrest him when he emerged from the hearing. They testified that Dugan and another judge, Kristela Cervera, stepped into the hallway wearing their robes. Dugan angrily told four members of the team to report to the chief judge's office. As Cervera led them to the office, Dugan returned to her courtroom and led Flores-Ruiz out a private door into the hallway. Prosecutors produced transcripts of audio recordings from microphones in her courtroom that show Dugan told her court reporter that she'd take “the heat” for showing Flores-Ruiz out the private door. Two agents Dugan missed during her confrontations with the team followed Flores-Ruiz outside, and a foot chase through traffic ensued before he was finally arrested. Members of the team testified that Dugan divided them and forced them out of position, leaving them too short-handed to make a safe arrest in the hallway. Dugan's attorneys argued that the arrest team could have apprehended Flores-Ruiz at any point after he emerged from the courtroom and Dugan shouldn't be blamed for their decision to wait until he got outside.

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith arrived on Capitol Hill for a closed-door interview with House Republicans on Wednesday after lawmakers rebuffed his offer to testify publicly about his investigations into President Donald Trump. The private deposition is part of an ongoing investigation by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee into the Justice Department's criminal inquiries of Trump during the Biden administration. Smith was subpoenaed earlier this month to provide testimony and documents, and his lawyers indicated that he would cooperate with the congressional demand despite having volunteered more than a month earlier to answer questions publicly before the committee. Smith did not speak as he arrived just before 10 a.m., but his lawyer Lanny Breuer told reporters: “Jack is showing tremendous courage" by testifying. Trump told reporters at the White House that he supported the idea of an open hearing, saying: “I'd rather see him testify publicly. There's no way he can answer the questions.” Smith is expected to discuss both of his investigations of Trump but will not answer questions that call for grand jury materials, which are restricted by law, according to a person familiar with the investigation who insisted on anonymity to discuss the interview. He is also expected to correct what he regards as mischaracterizations from Republicans about his work, including about his team's use of cellphone records belonging to certain GOP lawmakers, the person said. Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the Justice Department investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Smith’s team filed charges in both investigations. Smith abandoned the cases after Trump was elected to the White House again last year, citing Justice Department legal opinions that say a sitting president cannot be indicted. Republicans who control Congress have sought interviews with at least some individual members of Smith’s team. In recent weeks they have seized on revelations that the team, as part of its investigation, had analyzed the phone records of select GOP lawmakers from on and around Jan. 6, 2021, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to halt the certification of Trump's election loss to Biden. The phone records reviewed by prosecutors included details only about the incoming and outgoing phone numbers and the length of the call but not the contents of the conversation.